Ralph Bulger, the father of murdered toddler James Bulger, today lost his high court challenge to keep his son's killers, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, in prison.

Three senior judges rejected accusations that the lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, had set a minimum sentence for the child killers which was so low - given the enormity of the crime - that it threatened to "undermine confidence in the criminal justice system".

Lord Justice Rose, sitting with Mr Justice Sullivan and Mr Justice Penry-Davey, ruled that Ralph Bulger did not have legal standing to challenge the tariff. They also refused Mr Bulger permission to appeal against their decision. The heart of the decision is that victims do not have the right to intervene in tariffs set by the court.

The decision was a bitter defeat for Mr Bulger in his attempt to overturn Lord Woolf's recommendation last October which allows Thompson and Venables to be considered for parole in the near future.

"I am absolutely devastated by today's ruling. I have spent two years trying to get this back to court and it now seems it is all over," Mr Bulger said in a statement.

In his ruling in October Lord Woolf took into account that neither boy had shown "any aggression or propensity for violence during his period of detention" after being sentenced for the crime.

But lawyers for Mr Bulger argued that Lord Woolf's recommendation to reduce the child killers' tariff for retribution and deterrence to seven years and eight months should be quashed because of the new evidence about Thompson and other flaws in the judge's decision.

It was claimed the tariff should be reconsidered because of the "astounding" failure of the Home Office authorities to tell the judge of newspaper reports that Thompson had been involved in two violent incidents.

Lord Woolf went wrong in law when he cut the tariff because he put rehabilitation before the needs of punishment and deterrence, lawyers for Mr Bulger claimed.

Thompson and Venables, who were 10 when they abducted and tortured two-year-old James on a railway line in Liverpool in 1993, have so far served their sentences in secure local authority accommodation.